When Light Reveals: From Blindness to Worship

But John nine asks something more unsettling. What if the greatest obstacle to beholding God is believing that you already see clearly? What if the biggest obstacle to you seeing God is believing that you already see clear enough? See, this chapter is not just about a blind man receiving sight. It's about certainty. It's about who gets to say what is right and true, and it ends with Jesus saying the statement, for judgment, I have come into this world that the blind will see and the sea will become will become blind. Those who see will become blind. See, the problem is in the story is not blindness, it's certainty. [00:33:38] (47 seconds)

See, in John's gospel, judgement is not volatility, it's not divine overreaction, it is clarity. See, when light enters a room, it doesn't create dust. It doesn't create stains. It simply reveals it. So when Christ stands before us, the only response to our response to close discloses our posture towards God. The healed man moves towards Jesus and worships and declares, you are Lord. You are the leader of my life. Teach me. The Pharisees meet the same Jesus, and they insist, I already see. [00:46:17] (50 seconds)

Here's but here's the mercy. The same light that exposes is also the light that heals. The one that renders verdict is the one who goes looking for the man cast out of the synagogue. The judge is also the shepherd. The one who reveals our blindness is the one who opens our eyes. The only safe place place in this kind of light is surrender, not judgment, not defensiveness, but worship. Lord, I believe. Lord, teach me. [00:48:23] (48 seconds)

Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind? It's a tidy theological system. Suffering must equal sin. Disability must equal punishment. God must be running a moral slot machine in heaven. Right? Insert obedience, cha ching, you get blessing. Insert failure, cha ching, you get consequence. It's clean. We can understand it, and it presents a sense a sense it presents to us a sense of control. If suffering can be traced to a cause or a fault, then the universe remains predictable. [00:35:27] (43 seconds)

He admits his ignorance. He doesn't have the complete picture. He doesn't claim comprehensive understanding of what happened. He he simply testifies to what he has experienced. The Pharisees say, we know. We know. We know. The man says, I don't know. One claims to certainty. The other claims to experience. One defaults to a system. The other just simply tells the truth of what happened. And slowly and almost imperceptibly as we see unfold in this chapter, the one who admits ignorance actually ends up to be the one who leads who worships. And the ones who claim knowledge and claim certainty and claim that they are worshiping the one true god are the ones who find themselves moving towards blindness. [00:40:20] (44 seconds)

The light of the world stands before us, and that light, that embodied truth tests what we have built, our explanations, our assumptions, our self assurances. And some of those structures will collapse in that light, and some of them will be refined, but nothing remains untouched. Judgment is that holy clarity that comes when reality is decided not by our preferences, not by our fears, but by Jesus himself standing before us. [00:47:40] (43 seconds)

That's very easy for, I think, all of us to identify with this healed man. But before you do that, pause. Where might we be closer to the Pharisees than we imagine? Where do we protect our certainty instead of receiving sight from Jesus? Where do we defend our frameworks of being and living in this world instead of just kneeling before the almighty God? See, the light still stands before us. The imitation remains the same. Is it we know, I got this God, or Lord, I believe? [00:49:12] (44 seconds)

Jesus dismantles that framework with a single sentence in verse three. Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. He refuses to play the blame game. He refuses moral slot machine logic. The disciples are not cruel. Trying to point out the fault here. They're just certain in the way the world works, and certainty can be more dangerous than cruelty. [00:36:11] (36 seconds)